4-20-24 - OpenBSD PowerPC ... activities
====

(I was going to say, "exploits" re my recent experience with OpenBSD,
but that would imply something entirely different, I'm afraid)

Below are just a few notes / thoughts re my recent experience with
OpenBSD.  In my continued exploration of Plan 9 and Unix, it seemed
appropriate to revisit OpenBSD on my PowerPC hardware:

 - I had previous experience with OpenBSD on both x86 and ppc
 - Always appreciated it for its simplicity (beauty, even?)
   - ... security, elegance, consistency
 - Installation target identified: my first-gen PowerMac G5 (dual 1.8)
   - A weekly-use workstation running Gentoo Linux
   - Took a bit of work to assemble a halfway-competent workstation
     installation due to state of modern Linux PPC -- fair number of
     broken / unsupported packages/toolchains -- never could get get
     a working 64-bit toolchain/userland
 - Took a couple of tries to find a compatible SATA drive
 - Installation of 7.4 macppc from CD went smoothly enough, but
    failed to boot from secondary drive. (rather, I was unable to
    work out the necessary OF/bsd.boot incantations)
 - ... reinstallation when reconfigured for primary SATA resolved boot
    issues
 - Package installation and workstation customization was
    straightforward - lacks some things currently, compared to Gentoo
    install, but was far more efficient in getting to a "competent
    workstation"
 - Took advantage of the delay in getting the G5 going to install
    7.4 on my PowerBook G4 (1.67)
 - I've really enjoyed using OpenBSD on both machines now
 - Both workstations are proving useful in support of FRST efforts
 - OpenBSD 7.5 upgrade went smoothly on PB, but macppc pre-compiled
    packages are (currently) missing from server
 - OpenBSD macppc shares same weakness w/ Linux PPC: many packages
    simply unavailable on PowerPC, period.  (But also, especially
    32-bit PowerPC (which, it's also a little absurd that I have
    to essentially treat these 64-bit PPC970s as 32-bit PowerPC (for
    still-unclear-to-me practical reasons)))
 - Still have much love for Gentoo, and appreciate Gentoo continuing
    to carry the PowerPC torch.  I will be returning periodically to
    that install -- it's still there on that other drive. ;)

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